


So You Got a Concussion and Married Your Droid

by urisarang



Series: A Droid, a Mando, and a Jedi Walk Into a Bar. . . [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Confusion, Force Healing (Star Wars), Found Family, Minor panic, Other, Temporary Amnesia, handsy nurse droids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29997495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urisarang/pseuds/urisarang
Summary: Din wakes up without his armor and without his helmet—He hasn't gone to sleep so vulnerable since he found the child.Worrying in its own right, but then he realizes he is not alone and it quickly turns into his worst nightmare.Dar'manda, soulless and damned.All of this is made worse by the fact that he doesn't even remember how it happened.  The last thing he remembers is an explosion, pain, and then darkness.
Relationships: Din Djarin/IG-11
Series: A Droid, a Mando, and a Jedi Walk Into a Bar. . . [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206611
Comments: 13
Kudos: 26





	So You Got a Concussion and Married Your Droid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [r3zuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/r3zuri/gifts).



> This was supposed to be one thing and then turned into another. Probably shouldn't have written it while so angsty, oops! Hope you like it anyway though :)

Din wakes up feeling rested—no. Not just rested, better than he’s felt in _years_. He never feels this good, it’s the first sign that something is wrong. The second is how comfortable he is. His body feels light, almost as if he were back at the covert where it was safe to sleep without his armor on—

That thought has his eyes flying open wide and that’s when he notices the third and fourth thing wrong in rapid succession. He’s not in his room on the Razor Crest, which makes the next thing he notices infinitely worse. The worst thing that could be wrong, an impossible thing in fact.

He’s not wearing his helmet. 

His hands twitch and he moves to reach around him, and that’s when he realizes he isn’t alone. The child lays on his chest quietly snoring. Din’s laying on the spare cot in the common area of the Razor Crest where anyone could come and see him, and judging by the sounds inside the ship? 

He’s not alone.

His heart starts thundering like a rat trying to outrun a rancor. His breaths are coming in too shallow, and far too quick to be effective but panic has already got its claws in him too far to stop it.

He’s _dar’manda_ , dishonored and soulless—the worst thing that can happen to any Mandalorian. It would be better if they had let him die with honor so his soul could join those of his people in the Manda. 

How could this have happened?! The last thing he remembers—heat, an explosion, and a whole lot of pain. After that? Nothing. It is all blank.

The child makes a sound as his eyes blink open slowly. If the child is here safe in his arms he must have been rescued but at what cost? He squints his eyes shut tightly against the world. Against the truth. Whoever ‘saved’ him? They may have saved his body but they damned his soul.

It would have been better if they had left him for dead. 

Another sound from the child, this time he sounds distressed. No doubt picking up on Din’s panic, but there is nothing he can do. He’s powerless against the waves of despair and horror rolling over him.

This is bad. This is really, really bad. What is he going to do? What _can_ he do? He can’t ever go back to the tribe, not shamed as he is now. 

The tribe.

Something about the thought of his tribe sticks in his head wrong, like a misshapen part. Maybe it’s because they aren’t _his_ anymore, he has no place with them—but it doesn’t quite feel right. He’s missing something. 

Something big. 

Something so big that even in the absence of memory he feels a gnawing void inside him when he tries to think of them. 

A blurry green thing drags him from his cycling thoughts. He blinks and then blinks again. His vision is blurred with unshed tears—though he does not know why. He’s upset, of course, he’s kriffing upset over his creed being broken but that isn’t why he is near tears. It’s something else, something that almost feels worse but it is just barely beyond his grasp.

The child reaches out with his little clawed hands for Din’s face. Din’s too out of it to say anything, though even if he could speak what would he say? He’s lost.

Din lets out a gasp when he feels the child’s tiny hand on his face. The first thing other than his own hands to touch there since he was a small child. This, too, hurts but in a good way. A connection with another being. A fragile hope that perhaps he can have someone to call his own even if he has lost his tribe. Another concerned coo has Din reopening eyes he had not realized had fallen closed.

He cannot be this child’s _buir_ , he is unworthy. But maybe he can be something close—at least until the child is old enough to find someone better. His hand trembles and shakes wildly as he lifts it from his lap to touch a long ear.

It’s just as soft as he thought it would be. Just as perfect. The child tilts his head to the side, looking at Din as if he is confused—something Din can relate to. As cute as the child has always been, he’s ten times as cute without the helmet in between them distorting Din’s view.

One small consolation prize for an eternity of damnation, Din thinks a touch hysterically.

The sound of footsteps, metal on metal, rings out as something approaches. On instinct Din wraps his arm around the child and twists him against his side. Shielding him against whatever may come as he turns and grabs one of the many blasters hidden nearby and points it in the direction of the sound.

An IG unit steps into view, a brief moment of fear until he recognizes it as the nurse droid. His fear quickly twists into anger and rage. What else would forsake Din’s wishes but a soulless machine? 

“Why?” His voice shakes with desperate anger but comes out barely a whisper.

“You are in distress. What has happened?” The droid asks as if it doesn’t _know_. How could it not? But droids do not lie—does it not know the terrible thing it has done to him?

“My helmet—why?” Just as his thoughts are in disorder it is proving difficult to form sentences. The droid’s cameras spin and zoom in and out as it looks at him.

“You do not remember,” It sounds. . .concerned. But it’s just a machine—it can’t _feel_ anything. There must be something wrong with his head. That thought sticks much like the thought of his tribe. 

“My head,” the blaster in his hand lists to the side. Useless, he drops it, his hand going to his temple. “Something’s wrong.”

“You suffered a traumatic brain injury,” The words ring inside Din’s head, echoing and bouncing in a way that rings true. “The bacta spray appears to have proven ineffective at properly treating your injuries. The second application so soon after the first was a gamble. One we did not win.”

Its words are strange, spoken too familiarly. IG had always been careful to maintain a professional demeanor when speaking with Din. Why would that change? What purpose would it serve a droid to be friendly with one who hates it?

“I will fly us to the nearest hospital equipped with a bacta tank,” the droid tells him as if it has any business flying Din’s ship. The droid takes two steps forward, its cameras spinning as it looks over Din. “You will need to be secured before we leave. The risk of further damage during the flight and landing is too high. I will carry you to your room.”

Din makes a face, being carried by a _nurse_ droid of all things? How far has he fallen for this to be his reality? This is no way for a Mandalorian to live. 

But he is no longer a Mandalorian—a fact that could not be more clear as he watches unable to even protest being treated like an invalid. The droid reaches for the child but he makes an unhappy sound and clings on tighter to Din. 

“I must attend to your _buir_ , please do not make this more difficult,” Din blinks, since when does it know how to speak Mando’a? But more importantly, why would it call Din the child’s _buir_? He cannot claim that title—even before he became _dar’manda_ he was unworthy of such a title.

Not with what he had almost done. 

His fingers curl as he holds on tight to the child’s robes. He had come so close to losing him—no—abandoning him. He doesn’t deserve to hold the child in his arms, and yet he cannot bear to let go. The child’s weight against his chest is a familiar one. 

A comfort. The one thing he has left that is worth holding onto.

“Now you both are distressed,” the droid says, sounding almost apologetic? “I did not intend to imply that I would take the child from you. Nor you from your _buir_. Only that I must move him as he is gravely injured.”

The child turns his head to look at the droid curiously. Trying to understand its words. He looks back at Din, his ears drooping even further. He closes his big eyes and his face scrunches up in concentration, the same face he makes when he tries using his powers.

Din opens his mouth to object but a strange _tingling_ sensation in his head stops him before he can start. It feels—feels almost like an itch he didn’t know he had is being scratched. 

His eyes fall closed as his whole world narrows down to whatever it is that the child is doing to him. He probably should be worried about it, but the kid has never done anything but try and help Din—even when Din was his enemy.

The child would not hurt him, he knows it. Just as the child has known all along that Din could never harm him either. From the moment they first laid eyes on another Din could feel a pull.

A connection between them.

If he were not _dar’manda_ he would be honored to speak the words and claim the child as his own. He wouldn’t have made the best _buir_ but he would have tried. Would have learned and gotten better.

“You are straining yourself. Cease whatever it is that you are doing,” the droid says, its voice sounding far away. 

The feeling inside of Din grows, like a light. Growing brighter and brighter until all of the sudden it disappears—but it is as if a switch has been flipped to ‘on’ inside Din’s mind.

He remembers.

His eyes fly open to look at the child in his arms. His _ad’ika_. The child’s eyes are drooping and his hands fall down to his sides. Using his powers so soon after saving them all from the flametrooper has him exhausted.

Din lifts the child up so that he can press a kiss into his forehead. A soft, tired sound of happiness.

“Thank you little one,” he says softly. “Sleep, _buir_ will be here when you wake up.” The child’s eyes slide all the way shut and he falls asleep almost instantly. 

Din looks up to see IG-11 watching them carefully, unsure. Din’s lips twitch down into a frown, he had treated his _riduur_ poorly. Understandable considering he did not and could not have known IG-11 was his _riduur_.

Even still he has much to apologize for.

“You remember,” IG-11 states, its superior, and undamaged processors having already put the pieces together. “That is a relief. I was worried for your welfare.” 

It is the strangest thing, but Din believes it. Knows that it means those words it says. IG truly cares for him in its own way. Cares for the both of them, far beyond the simple programming Kuiil had done.

Stranger still is the fact that Din also cares for the droid—for his unconventional _riduur_. It has been so long since he has allowed himself to care for another and that he would choose a Jedi child and a hunter droid to be the first he would allow inside his heart? To make a clan of three made of those who should be fierce enemies?

It is no wonder the Armorer was always so exasperated with him. A troublesome child becomes a troublesome adult—he can just hear her words. The gnawing void inside him grows at the memory of her voice and a tear slips free. And then another and another.

It is hopeless to try and stop them, so he does not even try. Letting them fall free as he holds his _ad’ika_ in his arms. IG-11 steps forward and reaches out a metal hand and brushes away a tear.

The second being to touch Din’s face since he had taken the creed. Though its metal is cold and unyielding where the Child’s touch had been warm and soft—it does not feel wrong or foreign. It feels like a soothing balm against his heated face. A relief to have a solid and sturdy presence when he is so weak.

“You have lost much today,” IG-11 says, sympathy evident with its mimicry of slumped shoulders. It is probably something within its programming to appear sympathetic to its patients and yet Din knows it is more than just that. Its touch would not linger after wiping away his tears if it were simply following its programming.

“I—” Din starts, but has to stop to clear his throat. His voice rough and catching in his throat. IG moves to take its hand away from Din’s face but Din catches its hand within his own and leans his face against it for a moment. Reluctant to lose contact so soon. 

It feels strange to hold hands—not just with a droid but with anyone. Anything. It has been decades since he had last done so, not since he took the creed.

Not since he lost his _buir_ and had become afraid to get attached to someone fearing he would only to lose them later.

It feels—if feels good. Even more so when IG’s hand gently squeezes his hand back. It could crush every bone in his hand without any effort, and yet Din feels safe. Safer than he has in a long time having a literal killing machine hold his hand so carefully.

Din is terrified of losing any more people he cares for. He’s lost nearly all of them in so short of a time. His grip tightens around both the child and IG’s hand. He cannot bear even the thought of losing either one of them.

It is a good thing his _riduur_ is a child of metal, an experienced hunter, and not so easily killed. Together they can keep their family safe and whole. 

“I lost, but I have also gained much today,” Din says, voice thick. He pulls IG’s hand down against his chest, it does not resist. Its cameras zoom in and out as it looks down at Din.

“You seek physical comfort,” not a question, a statement of fact. It leans over and wraps its other arm around both Din and the child. “I will be happy to provide it. For as long as you desire.”

He still hasn’t processed any of what has happened, or how he feels to have his life changed so drastically but he knows one thing—he cannot regret whatever it was that brought him to be in this moment now. 

To be able to hold his clan within his arms and to be held in turn—perhaps they can get through this.

Together.


End file.
